


Out of the Arena

by Christal_rose_kayander



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M, Ratings may change, cato and clove, cato and clove are the tributes that win, no one can ever win the games, relationship, there will be darkness, what if
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-09
Updated: 2016-01-08
Packaged: 2018-05-12 17:16:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5674186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Christal_rose_kayander/pseuds/Christal_rose_kayander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The life of a victor was supposed to be perfect. It was a life of luxury and safety. A life longed for by all. But really, it is only that way when you haven't won the games. Correction, when you've survived the games. No one ever wins the games.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of the Arena

Cato woke up with sweat drenching his back; but he did not scream. He was much too used to these horrors by now. He remembered the sounds of the others as they died. As he killed them and though he was bred to be a soldier, he was unfortunately human. He shuddered at the memory of how he had once reveled in the deaths of others, in the murders that he had committed and in the knowledge that they were, in fact, murders and not games at all. No. It was a game. Everything was a game. And the game board did not stop in the arena. His house was a game board and so was the district and the Capitol as well. Snow was the king. He was a pawn. Only a pawn. Cato shook his head and stood up. He got out of bed and wandered into the bathroom in his new mansion. It was a beautiful house but the floors were cold and so were the walls. He could feel the coldness seeping through his veins like poison and finding its home in his heart. The water that he splashed on his face was also cold. Everything was just so cold these days.  
He lay back in his bed with its feather pillows and incredibly soft comforter but it no longer felt worth it to sleep. Seeing that it was about three in the morning it wasn't exactly worth it to get up and start his day either. Therefore, and not entirely with his permission, he began to reminisce. Every moment was vivid in his mind as if the games had been mere days earlier and not months. The wolf mutts succumbing the cornucopia was only the beginning it seemed of the horrors that day and night. He had managed to get to Clove in time when she was captured by Thresh and he had killed him. Still, there were Katniss and Peeta lift to deal with. He took no pleasure in their deaths. Peeta had attacked him and then proceeded to be thrown off the edge and into the pack of mutts. His screams could be heard the whole night long and every single one was a knife of guilt in Cato's chest. Katniss had a much less painful death. After Peeta had fallen, she took a knife and plunged it into her own chest. He supposed that the whole love affair was just an act but even with her last breath, she was always proving him wrong. The hovercraft, true to it's word, had come to pick them up at sunrise but something of him had been left in that arena.  
Cato could swear that his soul had been ripped to pieces in those games. His mind and heart had also suffered. It seemed after a while that his body was really the only thing that had remained in tact. Still not sleeping, and at four in the morning, he decided to go to the training facility that he had been in his whole life. Living as the mindless robot he was supposed to be was much less painful than thinking about the things that he had done or the fact that he didn't even know why he had wanted to survive the games at all. Walking in, he grabs a sword out of habit and makes a way to the dummies that remind him all to much of those in the training center. But a sound-the faint thwack of a knife hitting a target- makes him stop moving for a moment. There is only one other person in this world that never stopped training after the games. Why were they training anyway? The answer was simple. The games weren't over yet. There was war yet to come.

"Clove?" Cato yells into the cavernous room. The thwacking briefly stops and there is silence. For a moment he thinks that maybe it wasn't Clove at all and maybe a child that hasn't been in the games yet, and another possibility is that she simply isn't going to respond.  
"Over here," she says and if the person saying these words were anyone else, he would have thought they had been crying. As he turns the corner, he finds that even though it is Clove, he was right. It shakes him to the core to see the tears making their way down her cheeks and he as the desperate urge to wipe them away.  
"What happened?" Cato asks with worry in his tone that surprises even himself.  
"Come on Cato! You know exactly what happened!" she yells throwing a knife with enough venom to go straight through the dummy it was aimed at. "Or were you not there? Are you telling me that the reason you're here right now is because you think you're growing fat and therefore set your alarm for four in the morning? Ha! I wouldn't believe it for a second!!" He backs away but there is truth in her statement and with no self preservation at all, he makes his way over to her, knives of no because he does understand. He understand more than anyone. She doesn't pull away or throw a knife at him like he might expect. In fact, upon his embrace, she falls to pieces. No. It wasn't that she had instantly fell to pieces as if she was made of something as fragile as glass but that she was already broken and the glue that had been holding her together just wasn't working anymore. If he had ever been given any glue in the first place, he would have fallen to pieces too.

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a one-shot. However, like many other fics I have started, the updates are few and far between. Sorry about that! I hope you enjoyed.


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